Modern computing networks provide access to a wide variety of computing resources such as data archives, search engines, data processing, data management, communications, and electronic marketplaces, as well as media and entertainment services. As the number and size of such computing resources, and their user communities, have grown and as these resources and communities become more sophisticated, a need has arisen to establish increasingly sophisticated usage policies. For example, such policies may include policies that address security, privacy, access, regulatory and cost concerns.
Often, policy enforcement in connection with computing resources involves the attestation to one or more properties of a computing resource. As an example, a computing resource may be required to have one or more properties before a particular action can be taken in connection with the computing resource. Entities able to provide updates to computing applications, for instance, often require that the applications being updated are properly licensed. Traditional techniques for attesting to such properties, such as techniques utilizing manual registration, can be cumbersome and inconvenient. Moreover, modern computer networks often involve the control and administration of multiple devices, including multiple virtual devices. Therefore, the disadvantages of traditional techniques for attesting to various properties are even more pronounced in multiple device environments, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and other environments.
Same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and figures to reference like components and features, but such repetition of number is for purposes of simplicity of explanation and understanding, and should not be viewed as a limitation on the various embodiments.